a blog by Lee McIntyre

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The Happiest Umbrella

Going Beyond: In keeping with the name of this blog, from time to time I’ll go beyond the content of my Life on the Gelato Diet eBook to add another episode from Bolzano. Today, it’s the story of finding “The Happiest Umbrella” in Piazza Walther, one of those umbrellas seen in the photo with Walther in an earlier post.

It was taken when they were striking the set, as it were, in Piazza Walther one day — i.e. the outdoor cafe seating areas were being dismantled for the winter. It’s quite a production — they don’t just have a few chairs and tables, they actually build metal structures for the tables and chairs, covered either by a full awning, or individual umbrellas:

I had trouble seeing how I was going to take an interesting shot of the ongoing work from where I was standing. But then I got distracted by seeing a face in an unexpected place: one of the big table umbrellas was packed and happily waiting his turn to get taken off to winter storage:

The Most Happy Umbrella, Bolzano, 2010

I mean, does that look like happy smiling face, or what? It makes me smile every time I see it. 🙂